


A Thousand Times

by Kestrel_sama



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Past Lives, Reincarnation, but it's fine because they're ghosts, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrel_sama/pseuds/Kestrel_sama
Summary: What happens in the afterlife? Where do we go?
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 8
Kudos: 120





	A Thousand Times

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, this was mostly stream-of-consciousness writing that turned into an homage to all the lives we make these men live in fanfiction.

In an adobe house on the edge of the desert, Jesse McCree died with a sixty-quadrillion-dollar bounty on his head and no one left to collect on it. The open window into his bedroom played host to a curious turkey vulture, drawn in by the scent of death. Three others circled overhead, their black wingspans rocking in the updrafts of an early morning breeze. 

The vulture peered inside with one curious eye, cocking its bright red head and startling back momentarily at the human sitting upright in bed. It knew enough to be wary of these strange predators, but this one was the source of that delicious smell. A roll of tobacco hung loosely, clenched between stained teeth that were bared in a defiant grin. 

Jesse McCree had always sworn that he’d never face Death lying down. 

Jesse McCree kept his promises. 

***

The afterlife weren’t anything Jesse had expected. There were no choirs of angels, or (more likely in his case) little red demons with pitchforks. There was no bright light or booming voice demanding answers for his sins. No, Jesse was treated to the sight of his own grinning corpse being picked apart by a scrawny vulture brave enough to venture into human dwellings. 

While he had to admit that watching his eyeballs get plucked out by that sharp little beak was fascinating, in a gut-churning way, he had the feeling that there was nothing left for him here. Gathering himself together in the form he’d been most confident and comfortable with himself, Jesse McCree strode out of his little adobe dwelling with the ristras hanging from the porch awning, and the dirty pots still in the sink, and headed into the desert. 

***  
The archer found him straddling a cliff overlooking the ocean, the desert vast and red behind him, and the ocean just as vast and blue ahead of him. At some point, since leaving the adobe hut in the desert, Jesse had ventured into a liminal space that was neither here nor there. And he waited. And now that the archer had arrived, there was no more waiting he needed to do. 

“Bout time you showed yer face,” he drawled, tipping his head back to look at Hanzo from under the brim of his stetson. He grinned a lazy grin, lopsided around the cigar clenched between his teeth. 

They hadn’t been partners or lovers or husbands in the world Jesse had recently vacated. But they had been elsewhere. Else _when_. A hundred times they’d lived and died, their paths crossing more often than not. A thousand times they’d fought or fucked or done both at the same time. A hundred thousand times they’d tangled together in passion, in desperation, in sheer carnal delight. 

In love. 

Every time they met it was new. Except for this time. This time they remembered, and as Hanzo settled to sit on the edge of the cliff with him, Jesse pulled him close, sharing his relief with his other half. 

“We missed each other this last time,” Hanzo murmured, resting his head on Jesse’s shoulder and stealing the cigar from his mouth to take a drag. Jesse hummed, fingertips rubbing soothingly along Hanzo’s shoulder. “Turned left when I shoulda turned right. Sorry sweetheart.” He turned his head and pressed a reverent kiss to the top of Hanzo’s head. The archer huffed a sigh and flicked the spent cigar over the cliff. 

“What now?” 

Jesse stretched, though he didn’t really feel sore or stiff from waiting. It was more an act of human muscle memory than anything else. “Not rightly sure, pumpkin. Feels like we oughta get goin’ though.” 

Hanzo grunted a displeased noise but got to his feet anyways. Jesse watched him with ineffable adoration, his insides warm and content. “Least wherever it is, we’re goin’ together,” he murmured as he rose, dusting off his pants and settling his serape over his shoulders. While Jesse had chosen himself at almost-middle-age, (nearing forty, but still strong. Wearing armor he’d only worn in a few of his lifetimes. The Gunslinger) Hanzo had chosen to show himself in an amalgam of who he’d been in several lifetimes. 

Long silver hair and a trim beard, piercing eyes as dark as the inside of a cave. A ball piercing on the bridge of his proud nose, and the garb of his homeland from the time they’d met in the early 1900’s. Taisho-something. 

No matter which version of Hanzo he was, he was still Hanzo. Still Jesse’s other half. Still his beloved. 

“Y’look good, dumplin’.” Jesse crooned, catching Hanzo’s hand as they strolled neither towards the desert nor the ocean, but along the cliff, towards the dark sea of a forest. Hanzo’s chin tilted up slightly, a coolly smug look on his handsome features. “I always look good. You, on the other hand, look like a ruffian.” 

Jesse chortled, squeezing Hanzo’s hand gently. “Pretty sure last time I looked like this you called me a “deadbeat cowboy film wannabe with a disgusting lack of propriety or dignity” so I think I’m movin’ up in the world.” 

Hanzo snorted indelicately, chuckling at the memory. “And at the same time, you called me a prissy, self-important douchebag incapable of wearing an entire shirt, so I wager we are even, cowboy.” 

Jesse stopped walking, turning to stare at his companion. Hanzo waited, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. 

“I fuckin’ love you,” Jesse declared, just as Hanzo knew he would. 

“I love you as well,” he said easily - far more easily than he’d ever done when living - and drew Jesse close to him for a kiss. Their lips met with familiarity, bodies well attuned to what the other liked, and it was no less passionate for it. 

They’d shared a million kisses, and still it was as good as the first. 

As easily as it could have devolved into frantic groping and heated lovemaking, they knew there would be time for that aplenty soon enough, and instead continued on towards the forest. 

***

Though there were no other human souls in this strange world of in-between, ghostly flitters of birds in the trees flickered at the edges of their vision. Maybe in some more substantial place, they were two ghosts, slipping through the trees with nary a whisper of movement. 

“In all our times of rebirth, I do not recall ever coming here,” Hanzo observed as they strolled idly through the woods, the dirt path forming ahead of their feet as they walked. He had drawn his silver mane forward over one shoulder and braided it, even though he could have just willed it to be braided if he so wished. But the movements of deft fingers through silken strands of starlight was comforting. 

Just as Jesse thought of it, they passed a flowering drape of greenery and he stole a few flowers for Hanzo to braid into his hair. “Me neither. You think we’re done with all that? Bein born and livin and hoping to meet before we die?” In a way he’d be glad of it - being done with the toil and angst and death with only the possibility of finding Him again and loving him to make that life worth living. In another way he thinks he might miss the possibilities of what other lives they might live together. 

“It is possible. I would not mind it...being done with living life again and again and again. Provided we can stay together, of course. I think it would be nice to just...exist together, without the troubles that plagued us in life,” Hanzo mused. 

Jesse glanced at him sidelong, grinning. “Y’sure you wouldn’t get bored? Relaxin’ and fuckin as much as we wanted?” Hanzo snorted and took one of the flowers Jesse had taken, twisting the stem of the red blossom into his braid. “That sounds like paradise. And honestly I doubt either of us are worthy of paradise.” 

Jesse laughed and tucked a blue flower in the band of his hat. 

***

The forest thinned and opened up into a clearing, exposing a cozy cabin nestled in up against the treeline. The ghostly shape of deer dashed across the clearing, and the urge to walk faded, replaced with contentment. 

Home. 

They’d never been to this place, this cottage in the woods, but it felt like it had been placed for them. It felt like home. Hand-in-hand they walked through the open door and exhaled. 

“I think...that perhaps this is our reward after all,” Hanzo breathed in awe. Jesse tugged Hanzo back against his front, wrapping arms around his waist and nuzzling into his neck as they gazed at their home of blended cultures and histories. 

“I dunno what we did to deserve this, honey, but I think yer right.” 

Hanzo turned in his arms, wrapping his own around Jesse’s neck and pressing their foreheads together. “Finally, there is time for us to just be, beloved,” Tears of gratitude cut down his sharp cheekbones, dripping onto Jesse’s flannel and fading as quickly as they’d fallen. 

They made their way to the bedroom, and for a while, the cycle paused, and waited for the lovers to be ready to start again.


End file.
